Name: _______________________________
Materials: This sheet, a sheet of patty paper, a ruler or straight-edge, and a pencil.
Step 1: Draw your own triangle in this box. For best results, draw a scalene triangle (no
two sides the same length). Label the points of your triangle A, B, and C (order doesn’t
matter).
Step 2: Trace your triangle onto the center of a piece of patty paper. Label A, B, and C,
inside your traced triangle.
Step 3: Turn the patty paper around 180 degrees, and position the patty paper so that
point A on this paper is directly under point B on the patty paper and point B on this
paper is directly under point A on the patty paper. Trace the triangle again, and label A,
B, and C, again inside the traced triangle.
Step 4: Repeat step 3, but for points B and C, and then for points A and C. You should
now have 4 triangles on your patty paper, each of them sharing one edge with another
triangle.
Step 5: Rotate the patty paper again by 180 degrees, and add traced triangles to your
figure, following the same method as in steps 3 and 4.
Repeat until you’ve filled your patty paper.
Congratulations! You’ve just made a tessellation from a triangle.
Do you think this would work for any triangle? ___________________
Why do you think this works?
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